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Gen X Is From Mars, Gen Y Is From Venus: A Primer On How To Motivate A Millennial

Baby boomers made a deafening noise as they came of age, demanding that the world bend in their direction. Now here’s a shock: They raised their kids to have pretty much the same expectations. Those kids are now known as the Millennial Generation or Generation Y, spanning the early 20s to early 30s, and they’re driving many of their elders nuts—particularly those who belong to Generation X, which roughly spans the ages of mid-30s through late 40s.

Is this how many managers of Generation X view their millennial employees? (Photo credit: MrHicks46)

Jamie Gutfreund of the Intelligence Group spends a great deal of time examining the differing motivations and preferences of the generations. Gutfreund (herself a member of Generation X) says it’s important to bear in mind that Xers were culturally different from the Baby Boom Generation that preceded them.

While boomers insisted on being heard by the world, “we [Xers] were a smaller generation [less than half the size of the boomer generation] who felt no one was listening to us,” she says. “We felt we had to fight” to have a voice, to make an impact, to earn a seat at the table of power.

“Generation Y was raised with a different perspective,” she says. “Their Boomer parents taught them that their opinions are important. So they have an expectation to have a stake in outcomes.”

In a wide-ranging interview last week, Gen Xer Gutfreund and her millennial colleague Shara Senderoff (CEO of Intern Sushi) offered me some shrewd insights into how and why Xers and millennials differ, summarized below.

[A sadly necessary disclaimer: Hell, yes, these are broad and sweeping generalizations, just like when we say, "America chose Barack Obama as president in 2012" even though nearly half of American voters wanted Mitt Romney. The White House doesn't go unoccupied because of a lack of unanimity, and the same principle applies to this analysis.]

1. A Different Concept of Authority

Gutfreund says that Xers view the boss as an expert—someone whose hard-earned experience and skill demand consideration and deference. Access to authority is limited and must be earned. By contrast, Senderoff says, “Millennials think they can go in on the first day and talk to the CEO about what’s on their mind. The Generation X manager thinks, ‘What are you doing??’”

But she and Gutfreund note that it’s only natural for millennials to feel that way, given how their Boomer parents raised them to believe that their voice matters.

If a manager asks a Generation X employee to jump, the employee jumps and then asks, “Was that high enough?” But if a manager asks a millennial employee to jump, the employee is more likely to furrow an eyebrow and ask, “Why…?”

Senderoff says that even her best millennial employees will react in that manner. She adds that this may feel like a mutiny, but it’s not. The millennial has been raised in an environment in which she’s encouraged to engage and question authority; why would she accept a lesser bargain in the workplace?

Bear in mind again that millennials are the offspring of the Boomer parents who spent their formative adult years questioning authority. Gutfreund says that managers thus need to understand the benefit of shifting from “a command and control style to a more inclusive management philosophy.

2. A Different Set of Motivations

Gutfreund describes Xers as a “very individualistic generation. They were very independent. They wanted to get the corner office and the trappings of success.” Millennials, by contrast, want to find purpose in their toil and their career, she says, which does not necessarily come from getting the highest possible salary or nicest office.

“Generation X lives to work,” she observes. “Generation Y works to live.” Generation Y has multiple passions and is more global than any of its predecessors, as 70% of them say they would like to work abroad sometime over the course of their lives.

“Millennials are focused on making meaning, not just making money.” This may well strike Xer managers and HR personnel as too precious and lofty an attitude for the real world, but that’s the reality that organizations have to come to grips with.

3. A Desire for a Different Sort of Work Environment

Gen X tends to be structured and punctual and linear. Millennials can be unstructured and nonlinear, which can be maddening to the Xers.

Also, millennials are motivated by autonomy. They’re not clock-watching pencil-pushers, and they’re not lazy; they fully expect to be available to work 24/7, Gutfreund and Senderoff say, but they also expect the ability to leave the desk behind and take a walk.

Gutfreund says that, when you ask millennials where they’d like to work, the answer is generally: First, Google; second; Apple; and third, for themselves.

Indeed, both companies project a mission to change the world or at least make it a more interesting place. And Google’s freewheeling but intense and highly productive culture speaks to most millennials, what with the many perks that seem to make the corporate campus more like a college campus.

But Senderoff clarifies, “It’s not about free stuff [like lavish cafeterias and on-site massage therapists]. It 100% comes down to culture.”

She also says you can’t motivate millennials to join your company just by posting a generic job listing that may suit their skills. They want to sense what the larger company is about in terms of its mission and its values and they want to see it modeled by its leaders.

“They want to know,” she says, “how close would they be to executives they can hear and learn from.” They need a vivid picture in their head of how working for you would make their lives and their world better.

4. A Different Concept of Progress on a Project

Gen Xers famously bemoan the “flakiness” of millennials. Senderoff suggests that this is actually a result of speaking a language that millennials aren’t wired to understand.

“Millennials move through things quickly,” she says. “They think very quickly, and they’re used to doing so many things at one time.” The upshot, she says, is that they may deliver a prototype when the Xer manager expects a more polished finished prototype.

In this case, she says the manager needs to communicate her needs more clearly, while also understanding that the millennial appreciates regular feedback and coaching throughout the process.

Are we ready for a change in the workplace that allows millennials to bring their full talents to bear on our organizations?

Gutfreund says we aren’t as far along as we should be. “Many senior execs who run companies are delaying changes that need to happen,” she says, “… such as HR and performance reviews, because of short-term imperatives.”

And she suggests that a focus on long-term growth demands that the necessary culture changes be given greater priority.

[We'll be looking further this week into the clash of generations within the workplace. Please join us and share your thoughts, experiences and insights with our Forbes.com community in the comments section below. And hit Follow at the top of the page to be alerted about new posts.]

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You wrote that Gen X is “a smaller generation — less than half the size of the boomer generation”.

However, according to William Strauss and Neil Howe who coined the term “Millennial generation” and wrote a New York Times bestseller titled “Generations” — there are about 88 million Gen Xers in the U.S. today.

In addition, in a 2012 article for the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, George Masnick wrote that the “Census counted about 82.1 million” Gen Xers in the U.S. The Harvard Center uses 1965 to 1984 to define them so that Boomers, Xers and Millennials “cover equal 20-year age spans”.

Masnick concluded that immigration has filled in any birth year deficits during low fertility years of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Gennxer, thanks much for the info and the context. I personally don’t believe that the substantial “backfill” via immigration would change the cultural context of how Gen X was raised and how it came of age. Do you feel that Gen X fundamentally “made its voice heard” in the same way as the Boomers sought to do or in the same way that Boomers raised their Gen Y children to do?

Very interesting article! Certainly an accurate assessment of the differences between generations, differences which naturally stem from the circumstances of their upbringing.

That said, as concerns managing people and regardless of generation, all of us are motivated by the same things: having autonomy, competence, and relatedness. For management, that means helping people to be the best they can be at what they do is the fast road to achieving the highest level of workforce performance. It also means that the fast road to the very poorest workforce performance is for management to attempt to direct and control the workforce through some combination of goals, targets, orders, visions, directives, corporate value statements, mission statements, rewards, and the like often including a bureaucracy designed to force compliance. Since “direct and control” is the norm today, it is not surprising Gallup polling reveals that 70% of all employees are either not engaged or mad enough to become actively disengaged, and this includes management personnel.

Using the “help” vs the “direct and control” approach was quite standard before the appearance of management educators and consultants. As one of our great military leaders of WWII said – “Leadership consists of picking good men and helping them do their best.” Admiral Chester W. Nimitz

Using the “help” approach allowed me to create several fully engaged workforces which were able to approach the 500% performance gain Stephen Covey senior stated as being possible.

Great article! One thing…I’m a GenXer and my mom is a Baby Boomer. My siblings are 12, 15, and 17 years younger than me. Both they and I have our appropriate gen traits! I don’t believe that we developed these traits as a result of our parentage since we grew up in the same home-just in different eras. I think these traits must have developed from society i.e., school system, after-school activities, possibly the news. Just a theory.

Interesting and helpful. I’m not sure that Millennials that much different than their predecessors. Understanding that they may be more willing to ask questions and seek understanding or even challenge authority can help in how you approach them, but even that is a very dependent on the individual. Regardless, the keys to me are providing opportunity, training and education, feedback, and correction by a trusted leader.

This article assumes that Baby Boomers gave birth to only Millennials, when in fact a whole lot of Gen Xers have Baby Boomers for parents. It’d be interesting to see if those of us who are Gen X with Boomer parents have a different outlook from the clash of generations mentioned here. Are we more tolerant of the generation after us, or less?